Spawn and Die

 

On my way to take the doggies on a walk, I pulled over by the Buskin River bridge to check out the spawning salmon. There are plenty of them and they certainly are spawning. Some of them look very decrepit and I saw a few that looked almost dead floating about (look on right hand side of video down below for a floater). There is a commonly used semi-satirical expression in Alaska - 'spawn and die' or sometimes 'spawn till you die' (as seen on Ray Troll teeshirts). Looking down on the salmon spawning and dying brings total clarity to meaning of 'spawn and die'.

Anyway, the doggies and I hiked on up to our favorite lake and on the way I noticed that the salmon aren't the only ones 'spawning and dying'. The fireweed blossoms are now dead and turning into fluffy seeds that fly away. The tall grass is also turning brown and going to seed. I guess fall is the season of 'spawn and die'.

Patrick

Finally some blueberries

 

This year in town it has been a horrible year for berries. In Abercrombie it is practically impossible to find any ripe blueberries or salmonberries. It was a cold winter and spring and the berries just did not materialize. But what I have discovered is that there are berries in the sub alpine. On a recent hunting trip I found plenty of ripe salmon berries at about 1400 feet. And the other day on a dog walk I was shocked to find ripe low bush blue berries - and plenty of them. More than usual even!

It was a weird winter in that it was cold and yet there was very little snow. So despite the cold spring we lost our snow on the mountains very early. This year was the first time I can remember that I did not get to ski in June. So what I think happened is that despite the cold spring the berries on the mountains still got an earlier start than usual. Up high this year it was an early spring. 

So this year if you want to find ripe berries - go high!

Patrick

Quick trip to Ouzinkie

On Wednesday I made a quick work-related trip to Ouzinkie. Funnily enough until this year I had never been to Ouzinkie. It is the closest village to the City of Kodiak, and yet it was the last village on the island that I visited. Last December I finally made it to Ouzinkie, and this week here I was again in Ouzinkie. That makes 2 visits in less than a year.

While in Ouzinkie I got to visit an old village site. It was a HUGE village with great big house depressions that shared walls. There were maybe 10-12 house depression and probably up to 200 people once lived there. The grass was so tall it was hard to see the depressions and really figure out what is what. I realized that there is a reason we do our surveys in the spring when the vegetation is down! We'd stumble through the tall grass and then basically fall down into the huge old house depressions.

Hopefully, in the future I get a chance to map and document the site in the spring when the vegetation is down.

Patrick

Molly at the site

HUGE Housepit

Beavers and Change

 

For me it has sort of been the summer of the beaver. On our Karluk Lake dig earlier this summer we camped on Thumb Lake and had beavers swimming by and slapping their tails on a daily basis (click here for post). Then Mike and I went on our hunting trip to a small lake that has been repeatedly impacted by beavers. The lake has been recently dammed by beavers and even in the few days we were there we watched the water levels creep higher. The first time I went to the same lake a beaver dam had recently burst and the lake level was about 2 meters lower with a wide 'bathtub ring' of nothing growing. Then a few years after that I went back and the water level was still low but the bathtub ring was growing new alders and grass. It seems there is a cycle of raising and lowering lake levels.

At Thumb Lake I noticed that the beavers had eaten most of the readily available willow near the shoreline and that it was mostly a grass meadow near the lake. And, yes, I have noticed that the beavers seem to prefer willow over alder and other types of trees. I bet in a few years they decide to move some place else with more willow and that the willow again takes over on the shoreline.

Mike and I saw this at a nearby lake to where we were camping. That lake and its beaver house were no longer active and the lake levels had dropped. You could see all the cleared vegetation and lack of brush near the shoreline (see top photo and below). It was all grassland around the lake and totally different environment compared to the lake we were currently camped beside.

From grassy marsh meadows with sundews growing to brush farms to brush ringed lakes. It seems in beaver country the landscape is always changing.

Patrick

Nearby lake recently abandoned by beavers

It's a beaver wasteland

Camp in 2026 (see below for same view in 2017 and 2020)

beaver dam in 2026

Lake in 2017

Lake in 2020

Deer Camp

 

Mike and I had a pretty comfy deer camp.  We used a sil nylon tent from Titanium Goat that I had not used in years. The size was perfect for the 2 of us - it is also the tent that we once both used on a 2 week archaeological survey of North Afognak (click here for 2013 survey). So it has some memories.

On this trip we forgot our spitting axe and I had to use the back of the machete to split wood. Also most of the local wood was a little green. But we split up the wood and left it in the sunshine and it all dried out in a day. The little TiGoat stove chugged away and we were warm and happy. We even had a couple of afternoon naps.

Patrick

Harvesting

 

One of the main objectives of our trip was to bring back deer meat. And in this we succeeded. We harvested 2 deer which had been the plan all along. We hunted on 2 days and it was a pretty long hike back and forth from the alpine. There was also a lot of brush to negotiate. And so we only wanted to shoot one deer at a time and share a lighter load. 

Patrick

A cool granite glacial erratic for chilling the meat 

A little brushy getting to and from the alpine